We were lucky to catch up with Joel Harris recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Joel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on so far is an album called Extinction Letters that will likely be out in early 2023. I began writing the songs in 2019, not originally intending to get to album length. But over the past three years, I kept working on them, and writing more songs that seemed to fit thematically. The songs a double-sided response to my experience of life. On one hand, tracking the deep anxiety I’ve watched in the world around me, as seismic shifts are happening in society, politics and climate. Changes that are deeply traumatic on one hand, and highlight the perilousness of our species and earth. But also perhaps be a burned-off topsoil where new and better things can grow.

The more personal side, was a shift in my own life from someone who always felt fairly confident in my understanding of ultimate meaning, within a (fairly) well defined religious system, to someone humbled by their lack of certainty about anything other than fact of death, and love as the linchpin of human experience. Whether through the presence of birdsong, or the sound waves of stars, the whole album was an attempt to move from abstract ideas about life, to reality that can be experienced here and now. Internally, it felt like a similar process of burning off and replanting, this time with things that would last.

Joel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started writing songs pretty much as soon as I learned to play any instrument that would allow me to sing. As soon as that was possible, it became a vehicle for processing life. It took me till much later to learn how to speak for myself, and music sort of became the bridge through those years that I had no idea what my voice as a person was. I began just with an acoustic guitar, and that has morphed into other things over the years. In 2018, I had been continuing to make and record music, but not with much intention. But after talking with a number of friends, realized I would regret that lack of seriousness later in life. So the last 4 years have been an attempt at expanding both my song-writing, but also my knowledge of different instruments and production, as well as developing a live sound that was a departure from what I’ve spent most of my life doing. I’m also beginning to explore as well into the relationship between videography and music, but that is just getting going.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

It’s the same as it is with the rest of my life really. I want to reach the end of it without regrets about the beauty I was able to experience and put out into the world. Being a human is hard and life is short, and those moments (whether through music or something else) where we’re able to be present for reality, and astounded that we get to experience it at all, are not easy to grasp. Whether I’m watching the sun go down in the desert, or I’m playing a song for some friends in their living room, I want to squeeze every last drop out of those moments, because nothing is guaranteed tomorrow. Creating sometimes feels getting to hold those moments frozen in time, just for awhile.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I’ve heard people say “I don’t have a creative bone in my body,” and I’ve never believed that for a second. You don’t stay alive as a human without exercising some level of creativity. I think that way of thinking about creativity is why society often places so little value on the arts. And in reality, that is usually a narrative someone was told, or internalized about their creative ability. I suppose there’s a fork in the road where you decide that you want to direct your creative gift in the direction of asking questions about what it means to be human, and I guess for many of us, that happens because you experience things in life or yourself that you can’t make sense of, or easily categorize. I guess that a jumping-off place for art: finding the things in the human experience you are unwilling to look away from.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yellowracket.com/joel-harris
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/joelharrismusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialjoelharris/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/joelharrismusic

Image Credits
Jered Scott